


In a Strange, New Place

by seashadows



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 09:52:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1644500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seashadows/pseuds/seashadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hobbits need to eat seven meals a day, and they suffer without them. Dwarves don't, and Bilberry Baggins soon finds herself empty more often than not. Combined with her feelings towards someone who insists on belittling her at every opportunity, the entire situation has made her much more confusticated than bebothered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a Strange, New Place

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by wikdsushi, and written partially to fill [this](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/10731.html?thread=21681387#t21681387) prompt.
> 
> Title taken from the Fiddler on the Roof song "Anatevka."

Bilberry Baggins wouldn’t have wanted _any_ Dwarves on her doorstep and in her smial, if she’d been given a choice about it, but at least the twelve who had arrived first were hearty and appreciative eaters. Thorin Oakenshield, thick-boned and angular-faced and apparently King-under-the-buggering-Mountain despite her sex, was exactly the opposite. She sneered when she was introduced, sneered even more when Gandalf said that Bilberry preferred the name “Bilbo,” and refused to eat anything but a crust of bread and some old ale. 

Bilbo couldn’t remember ever being so insulted. Rules were rules, and she was sure that the Dwarves had lived in Ered Luin quite long enough to be familiar with Hobbitish courtesies. As it was, she couldn’t see how Thorin had even developed breasts with eating habits like that, much less her deceptively thick and robust figure (for a Dwarf, damnably muscled things that they were). Fíli, Kíli, and Ori were even younger and thinner than Thorin, but they had eaten a horse’s worth between them.

And yet, well…something about Thorin enticed her. It certainly wasn’t the idea of going off on some Valar-forsaken quest to certain death that made Bilbo sprint out of Bag End in her oldest shirt and one of her mother’s mud-stained adventuring skirts, shouting her intentions for the whole of Hobbiton to hear. Never mind the prospect of getting horse hair all over her best green jacket, which she’d thrown on top of everything else. 

It was for all of these _confusticated_ confusing reasons that Bilbo decided, at the end of her first day of adventuring, that she was going to keep her head down. She was exhausted, smelled like the wrong end of a pony due to Bofur’s mount wafting farts her way, and wanted nothing more than to eat whatever it was Bombur had cooked. 

“Here y’are,” Bombur said cheerfully when she came up to the pot, and handed her a bowlful of…glop. 

Bilbo cautiously sniffed at it and satisfied herself that it wasn’t about to poison her before sitting down on a nearby stone to eat. They were perhaps half a day’s travel away from Bree, slower-going than a Hobbit or Man as their party was, and the terrain around them had changed from the rolling hills of the Shire to a stonier sort of foothill. 

“How’s that for Dwarvish fare?” Bofur asked as he sat down on an adjacent rock. He took a spoonful of whatever-it-was and smacked his lips, then wiped his mustache. “Not your wheels of cheese, is it, Missus Hobbit?”

“Not exactly,” Bilbo said. She ate a spoonful herself, and satisfied herself that the contents of her bowl were probably more vegetable than animal in nature. “Er. Bombur’s the cook, then? He seems to appreciate good food.”

“More’n he can cook it. He’s an architect,” Bofur said with a grin, “but we’ve got to make do. Óin’s the only one who knows how to mix a physick, and if you gave him a pot o’ stew, he’d fall asleep an’ let it burn.” 

“Oh. Yes.” Bilbo had had enough experience with physicks to know all about the kinds of people who made them. “Well, as long as it’s not harmful to our guts.” 

“Did ye say ‘physick’?” Óin shouted from the other side of the cookfire. He shoved the opening of his ear trumpet in their direction. “I’ve got aught fer a melancholy humor, if yer after a day’s purge!”

Bilbo ducked her head and ate as fast as she could, not particularly eager to get on the wrong side of a Dwarf with a bleeding-bowl, while Bofur took another jab at Óin. “Give that to Thorin if ye like,” he said. “We’re all of us happy with the state of our bums.”

“Not if ye dawdle with your food!” Bombur spoke up. “Mam’d be ashamed, Bofur. Quick as y’like, or you’ll have a sour stomach come morning.” 

“Rest her soul, so she would.” Bofur patted Bilbo’s back hard enough to almost make her lose her grip on her bowl. “Now, see, Hobbits have the way of it! Eat lots and eat often, and make lots of bairns to get all the extra food et up.”

“If we all ate like Hobbits, Bofur,” Thorin said, “then our rations would be gone within the week.” 

Bilbo felt her cheeks go red-hot. “But there’s not any extra food here,” she said, quietly enough that (she hoped) Thorin wouldn’t be able to hear. Inwardly, she resolved to say as few words about the quality and quantity of the food she was given as possible. There was no reason to give Thorin more ammunition against her. “You don’t need me to eat it.” She pressed a hand into her stomach, which was growling despite the hot meal. Would this be dinner, tea, or supper at home? Without her normal meals to serve as a clock, she couldn’t tell. 

“You’ll forget about that when we’re on the road,” Bofur said. “There’ll be excitin’ things to see, no mistake about it. Bombur! Don’t eat the pot-scrapings off the spoon!”

“Well,” Bombur shot back indignantly, “and I suppose yer fine with wastin’ away to nothing without _your_ essential metals!”

Bilbo had never heard of anyone who needed to eat _metal_ to live. Dwarves were an odd folk. Not even her pregnant aunts and cousins had had cravings that strange. “What shall I do with my bowl?” she asked. 

“Oh, leave it. I’ll scrape it out.” Bombur flapped his hand at her and took a scrap of fabric out of the pocket of his coverall. “You look good and knackered, Missus.”

“If she’s to be our burglar, then she must work as we all do,” Thorin said. Her voice was quieter than it had been in the smial, but still audible and commanding. Bilbo looked down into her lap to avoid the sneer or glare that she was sure would follow. 

“She’ll do her part another night. Look at her, Thorin, she’s about to fall over.” Bombur had the right of it. Bilbo’s thighs ached, her lower arms were cramped from being held in one position behind the reins all day, her head swam as though she were still on her pony, and she was still hungry. A night in her bedroll would do her a world of good, and maybe tomorrow, Thorin would deign to let them stay in an inn. 

“Thank you, Bombur,” Bilbo said, and went to lie down on the bedroll that she’d been issued. She pressed a forearm into her stomach as she pulled the blankets over herself. Hobbits weren’t meant to do so much drudging on so little food, but maybe she wouldn’t hurt so much with time. 

~

The food at the Breelander inn (The Prancing Pony, it was called, and Bilbo would have laughed herself silly at that coincidence if she hadn’t been so tired) was much homier than what they got on the road. It wasn’t seven meals a day, but at least for the night the company stayed there, the Mannish portions made it so that Bilbo’s stomach didn’t rumble all night. 

Not, however, that that made one speck of difference over the next few weeks of travel. 

Bombur was…a _decent_ cook. That, she supposed, was to be expected. Those blasted Dwarf builders couldn’t know as much about good food as her old dad had, and she suspected that he’d only been pressed into the job because of his size. If she’d been in Hobbiton and someone had served her those same regular glops and stews, she would have made her excuses and picked at it a bit before going home to eat a real supper. Now, she was always far too hungry to care. 

Thorin was _wrong_. She knew nothing about Hobbits, and she was _blind_ if, after living in the Blue Mountains for years, she still mistook necessary indulgence for greed. Every day, as her stomach rumbled and she struggled to sit straight on her pony for the pain, Bilbo glared at the back of the King’s head and vowed to serve that stubborn, judgmental arse Hobbitish food until she burst. See how she liked having her visceral needs mocked. 

Then, even as her hands flew to her stomach to try to press the ache away, Bilbo would always chastise herself a bit. Thorin hadn’t lived with Hobbits, and she couldn’t know how much food they needed to survive. Perhaps Dwarves were a bit more flexible; she’d seen most of them eat her out of house and home, after all, but they seemed just as energetic as ever on traveling rations and terrible traveling climates. 

“Not that I mean to _complain_ ,” she quietly said to Bofur over supper one night, “but is it getting colder?” 

“Could be. I think we’re a bit farther north now,” Bofur replied. “What sort o’ summers d’you get in the Shire?”

“Warm, mostly,” Bilbo said, and shivered deeply. It had been getting hillier over the past few days, and she wouldn’t be surprised if mountain weather was responsible for how cold she’d started feeling at night. And, sometimes, during the day. Her wish for a thick sweater almost outweighed her wish for a handkerchief. 

“I’d give you m’jacket,” Bofur said, “but Bombur’d laugh, and I don’t think you’d like the smell of it.” He lifted an arm and sniffed beneath it, then grimaced. “Nope.”

“Thank you for the offer, but I’ll be fine.” Bilbo smiled. Ori liked to talk to her when it was his turn to be on watch, and Oin was a great source of knowledge about flowers and herbs, but Bofur was the only Dwarf who really treated her like a friend. Of course, he was as bearded (or, rather, mustached) and foul-smelling as the rest of them, so he wasn’t really a _touching_ sort of friend. 

Shameful as it was, Bilbo wanted one of those, and she knew whom it was her eyes fell on. Thorin, even though Bilbo tried her best to ignore that fact, was lovely. She was clear-skinned beneath her cropped beard, her black hair had the sort of length that most Hobbit-lasses wanted for themselves, and…well, Eru help her, every time Bilbo saw the curves of her breasts beneath that ridiculous tunic, she wanted to put her hand in her own trousers. 

She didn’t realize that her gaze had wandered to Thorin until Bofur pointed it out. “Put yer eyes back in yer head, burglar,” he said. “Thorin’s not one to show any interest. I think she’d turn to stone if she could.”

“I’m absolutely _not_ showing interest,” Bilbo said, jerking her eyes away from Thorin. “She’s been nothing but unkind to me since we met.” She didn’t bother lowering her voice. No matter what she said or did, no matter how close or far away Thorin was, there was no response. Anyway, she wasn’t insulting Thorin, just speaking the truth. 

“So,” Bofur began after a long pause, “have you always known y’liked lasses, or d’you just want our king’s beard in yer nethers?”

 _That_ earned him an accidental hiss as Bilbo clamped her teeth together in mortification. Silent treatment or no silent treatment, that particular question would undoubtedly get Thorin’s attention if Bofur kept blaring. “Oh, by all means, get her attention. I’m sure she could hate me a bit more.”

“Oh, she doesn’t _hate_ you. Well, no more than she doesn’t hate any of us.” Bofur stuck his finger in his bowl and sucked the grease off. “I’d ask if you’re goin’ to finish that, but…”

Bilbo looked down at the empty bowl in her lap. She’d finished her dinner long ago, and as usual, she could look forward to a long night of stomach cramps. Not to mention how shamefully _thin_ she was getting. Their last opportunity to bathe had been a week ago, and although Bilbo knew that she couldn’t have lost as much weight as she feared, the thought of loose folds of skin and flattened curves had made her hurry through her bath. “I haven’t got any left.”  
¬  
“I know. Here, leave it with me.” Bofur narrowed his eyes and looked at her for an uncomfortably long time. “Try an’ rest a bit while you can. Y’look terrible.”

“Thank you _very_ much,” Bilbo said, getting to her feet and dusting off her backside. Even she had her limits when it came to hearing what this be _bothered_ quest had done to her body, and Bofur had just reached it. “I’m going to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, _Mister_ Bofur.”

She thought he was about to say something else to her, maybe some sort of apology (and she’d have liked to see him try), but she was asleep before she even got her feet under the blanket. 

~

Bilbo looked down at the soup in her hands. _Take this to the lads_ , Bofur had said, but the two bowls swam and wavered in front of her to four, then eight, and she longed to eat them all. “Bofur,” she began, intending to ask if maybe – just this once – she could have a bit of extra food, but he was already ribbing Bombur for taking more than _his_ fair share. 

Well, unless she wanted to act like a Dwarf and eat the metal scrapings off the spoon, Bilbo was sure that there was nothing extra for her. Heavy-footed, she trudged over to where she could see Fíli and Kíli’s hunched backs. The louts would probably spill and throw more than they ate, and she silently mourned the loss of good food that would inevitably occur. 

But it wasn’t for mischief’s sake that they were turned away from the rest of the camp. One very confusing explanation later, and Bilbo found herself shoved towards the light of a frighteningly large campfire and the smell of…Eru Ilúvatar, was that roast mutton? 

“Mutton yesterday,” the largest of the trolls growled, “mutton today, and blimey, if it don’t look like mutton again tomorrow!” There was that question answered. Bilbo’s stomach growled, and she shoved her hands under her breastbone hard enough to hurt. 

The trolls were using entirely the wrong spices, and Bilbo nearly threw up what little she’d just eaten when she saw one of them sneeze into their pot, but food was food. What was a burglar for if not to…well…burgle? Surely a bit of mutton would be easier to steal than four ponies, and she’d been tasked to take those back. 

Standing on her toes to muffle the sound of her steps, she crept up behind the troll who had sneezed, which only put her closer to the smell of food. Her mouth began to water so strongly that she had to lick her lips and swallow hard. Maybe if she could cover her head in leaves and sneak in while they were fighting with each other…

“ _Ack!_ ” Suddenly, Bilbo was lifted off her feet by a painfully tight squeeze about her middle, brought close to the ugliest face she’d ever seen, and drenched in troll mucus. 

“Lookit what’s come out o’ me hooter!” the troll squawked. Bilbo closed her eyes and prayed to whomever might be listening that trolls were exactly as thick-headed as they seemed. 

“Well, I don’t like the way it wriggles around!” another one of the trolls said, moving closer. The troll holding Bilbo let go, and she was unceremoniously thrown onto the ground, her wind immediately knocked out. 

“What are you? An oversized squirrel?” the third said. 

“No – no!” Bilbo’s voice came out thin and squeaky. She cleared her throat and tried again. “N-no, I’m…I’m a lass – a Hobbit!”

“A _lassahobbit?_ Can we cook ‘im?” 

“I’m a her!” Bilbo shot back, putting her hands on her hips. Couldn’t these dunderheads tell a lad from a lass when one was standing right in front of them? 

“Well, whatever it says it is, we can _try!_ ” The troll’s hand came down, and Bilbo scrambled to the other side of the fire. In the dark, with only the fire to illuminate everything and confuse her vision, she could only see the hands and bodies as monstrous dark blurs. 

She ducked again and again, running around the tangles of fingers as thick as her torso and wrists that could smash her with one movement. It was useless in the end, though; she was small and quick, but they could cover more ground, and she found herself hoisted up into the air by her legs within minutes. 

“How many more of them _lassahobbits_ you got with you?” the troll holding her growled. 

“None,” she said. The blood rushing into her head was making her horribly dizzy. 

“It’s lyin’!” The troll joggled her up and down. 

“Hold ‘er feet over the fire,” another troll suggested. “That’ll make ‘er squeal…”

Bilbo gasped and clenched her fists, ready to at least go down fighting. No self-respecting Hobbit would allow their feet to be mistreated. She was saved from having to bite the troll’s fingers, though, by the sight of Fíli and Kíli running into the clearing with the rest of the Company behind them, swords and axes up. 

“Put her down!” Fíli shouted. 

Bilbo was swung out towards the Dwarves in response. Her head spun, and her stomach gave a frightening roll. She’d _never_ been up so high. “Lay down yer arms,” one of the trolls said, “or we rip ‘ers off!”

She might have been imagining it, but Bilbo thought she saw Thorin drop her sword first. The rest of the Company quickly followed suit, and _of course_ , the trolls grabbed them faster than a blink. Bilbo landed on the ground with a thud, again, as her troll dropped her in favor of spitting half the Dwarves over their campfire. 

Bilbo, for her part, found herself tied up in a rough burlap sack between Thorin and Fíli. Óin and Glóin were alternately yelling things in their rough Dwarvish language and insulting the trolls’ bodies, functions, and mothers, and Bilbo could feel Kíli shaking with fear from his position on Thorin’s other side. “It’s all right,” she said, but either he couldn’t hear or he didn’t care what she thought. 

One of the trolls suggested sage as a seasoning for their prey. Bilbo’s stomach growled, and she fervently hoped no one had heard. The Dwarves seemed like as not to misinterpret her bodily noises as acknowledgement that they’d be delicious seasoned and flame-roasted – 

\- _seasoned_. She knew enough about that to distract them, surely! Weren’t all Hobbits born to cook, after all? “Wait!” Bilbo got to her feet and hopped into the firelight. “You’re making a terrible mistake!”

“You can’t _reason_ with them,” Dori shouted, “they’re half-wits!”

“What’s that make us?” Bofur said indignantly. Bilbo wished she had the time to smack some sense into him, present company notwithstanding. 

“No, I, uh…I meant with the, uh…seasoning!” She licked her lips to rein in the excess of saliva she was producing. 

“Wha’ ‘bout the seasoning?” one of the trolls grunted. 

For this, she didn’t even have to lie. “Well, have you _smelled_ them? You’re going to need something stronger than sage before you plate this lot up.”

“ _Hey!_ ” Bombur shouted, his voice loudest among those of his companions. “ _Stronger?_ ”

She couldn’t tell whether he was protesting her comments on their smell or objecting to her choice of seasoning. Either way, he was correct, and she would have to exchange words with him later on when it was and wasn’t a good idea to give one’s opinion about food. 

“What’d you know about preparin’ Dwarf?” The troll squinted at her. 

“Let the leggerbrobbit talk!” his fellow shouted. 

“Preparing Dwarf…” Bilbo swallowed hard. “The best way to, ah, prepare Dwarves is to, um…skin them first!” That raised an outcry so loud and clamorous that she winced and narrowly avoided covering her ears. 

“Tom, get me the filletin’ knife,” said her troll. 

“Load a’ rubbish!” Tom scoffed. “I’ve eaten plenty wiv their skins on. Scruff ‘em, I say, boots and all!”

Well, that hadn’t - _wait_. Bilbo’s eye caught something light moving among the dark masses of the trees surrounding the clearing. Gandalf, of course! If she could keep these blasted trolls talking just a bit longer, he’d surely find a way to bring on the dawn. 

“Nothin’ wrong wiv a bit of raw Dwarf,” said the troll who’d sneezed on her. He picked Bombur up by his ankles, making his beard bounce and Bombur himself scream in obvious fear. 

“Not that one!” Bilbo held up her hands. “He’s, ah. He’s infected!”

“What’s that?” Tom the Troll asked. 

“H-he’s got…” Damnation, she was no Healer. All she knew about were colds and the like, and those terrible infections Stoors got from walking in the river. Nasty stuff; it’d do fine. “Worms! In his – tubes!” The troll holding Bombur immediately dropped him. “In fact, they all have! They’re infested with parasites.” Bilbo pointed at each group of Dwarves in turn and nodded. “It’s a terrible business. I wouldn’t risk it – I really wouldn’t.”

Of course, Óin, who should have known better, immediately repeated her excuse in as loud a tone as was possible, and within seconds, every Dwarf in the place was caterwauling about how they didn’t have parasites, _Bilbo_ had parasites, and so on and so forth. 

If her hands had been free, Bilbo would have put them over her face. As it was, she rolled her eyes, and thankfully, Thorin took the hint. She gave Kíli a healthy kick in what Bilbo hoped was his stubborn arse, and the Dwarves all changed their tune. According to them, they not only had parasites, but the _largest_ parasites this side of Ered Mithrin. 

“Wot’d you have us do? Let ‘em all go?” Tom demanded. 

“Well, erm. Yes?” she said. 

“You think I don’t know what yer up to? This little _ferret_ is takin’ us for fools!”

“ _Ferret?_ ” Bilbo repeated. 

“Fools?” another troll said. 

Then, blessedly, thanks to all the Valar, she heard Gandalf’s voice directly behind her. “The dawn will take you all!” Bilbo spun around in time to see him bring his staff down on a stone outcrop and split it in half with a deep cracking sound. 

The trolls shrieked and covered their faces, but they couldn’t prevent the sun from doing its work. Within minutes, they were nothing but hard, pitted gray stone, wearing expressions so frightening as to almost be amusing. 

Gandalf leaped down from the rock – how, she didn’t know – and started loosening the Dwarves’ bindings. Bilbo stared dazedly at him as he moved. She could wait a while before he got to her, if it was necessary. 

“Burglar?” Warm fingers undid the rope around her shoulders and slid the burlap sack down. 

Bilbo turned her head and blinked at Thorin. “Hello. Wasn’t expecting you. I…I suppose you can’t say Hobbits are greedy now, can you?”

“What has that to do with anything?” Thorin said. She blinked and stepped back a few paces. 

Bilbo opened her mouth to answer, but could think of nothing to say. In fact, she couldn’t think of anything at all, and although she didn’t remember the ground ever slamming up towards her before, she couldn’t quite bring herself to care. 

~

When she awoke, it was to the smell of a fresh meat broth. Bilbo’s stomach rumbled, and she opened her eyes. “Have I missed supper?” she asked. 

“You haven’t,” someone said. Theirs was a low, familiar voice – Thorin’s, Bilbo realized. She blinked down the length of her body, seeing the thick, dark furs that wrapped it. “Bombur cooked a soup especially for you.”

“Did he?” Bilbo pushed herself up on her elbows. “Oh, dear. Did I faint?”

Instead of answering, Thorin moved to her side and set down the bowl in her hands. “Why did you refuse to tell me how hungry you were?” she asked instead. 

Bilbo opened and closed her mouth a few times, each time sure that if she let out the tirade she’d been holding back since this journey began, she’d lose her head. The Valar only knew how willing Thorin was to use that sword of hers. “I _did_ ,” she finally said. “Well…you knew I was hungry. The first night, you called me greedy and I hadn’t done anything wrong.”

Thorin was silent for a long time. She picked up the bowl that she had set down and turned it in her hands, around and around, her eyes fixed on the swirling broth. “I did not know that extra food was a _need_ for you,” she said softly, “not merely a _want_. I apologize for speaking so sharply and unkindly.”

Those were small words. Too small, in Bilbo’s opinion, and she supposed hers was what counted. “It’s a bit too late for that.”

“Óin undressed you,” Thorin said, abruptly changing the subject, “to see if you had taken a wound.” 

“Óin did – he _didn’t_!” Bilbo sputtered. “I won’t have him looking at me. I’m…I’m not his to look at!”

“He didn’t look at you,” Thorin told her. “He only wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t bleed to death, but he found you starved instead.”

She supposed she couldn’t put it off any longer. For the first time, Bilbo lifted the covers and looked down at her body, shivering at the sight of her hips’ outline and the sad pouch where she had once had a proud, round belly. She certainly wasn’t _thin_ , not like a Hobbit who had been truly starved all their life, but she had lost enough meals to make her skin thin and gray in the faint light. 

“I suppose he did,” Bilbo said. “I have been, at that.”

“You won’t be any longer.” Thorin put a hand on her shoulder. “I cannot apologize enough, Mistress Baggins. We haven’t enough food for seven meals a day, but if everyone has to take a bit less, you _will_ have what you need for three.”

“Yes, yes, I’m supposed to believe that!” She didn’t know where they were, or why she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of any other Dwarf since she’d woken up, but she was grateful for the privacy. It gave her leave to shout at Thorin as much as she liked. “You treat me terribly, call Hobbits _greedy_ , and insist on working me until I nearly drop dead, and you expect me to believe that now you care?” Bilbo sat straight up, not caring that it made her blankets slip away to expose her breasts, and gave Thorin her best glare. “Tell me why I oughtn’t abandon this foolish quest of yours this minute!”

She fully expected Thorin to shout back at her, or perhaps try to hit her, for that outburst. The Dwarves had certainly proven that they weren’t averse to violence among their fellows. Thorin, however, set back on her heels and put the bowl down. 

“For this,” she said, and pressed her lips against Bilbo’s. 

Bilbo might have thought that she was having a very pleasant dream, but for the fact that Thorin’s mouth tasted of several weeks’ worth of unwashed teeth and her dreams never included that detail. Yet she didn’t care – despite the taste of her mouth, Thorin’s lips were firm and full, just as Bilbo liked them. True, her beard was something new, but Bilbo couldn’t bring herself to care about that, either. 

The air was cool on her face when she pulled away, and Thorin’s face was flushed. Her lips were swollen, too, but Bilbo refused to let that break her. “If _that_ was what you wanted to do to me all along, then why have you spent so long treating me as a nuisance?”

“I did _not_ treat you –“

“Yes, you have. Stop denying it, Thorin. I’m not about to attack you for it!” Bilbo sat on her hands, all the better to resist groping various bits and pieces. 

“Not a nuisance,” Thorin said, her tone exasperated. “I’ve treated you as I would any outsider. Have you any idea of how Dwarves are viewed outside of our own communities?” She crossed her arms and sighed. “Not that it’s anything you would know, but for a Dwarf to be called something as mild as ‘greedy’ is practically a compliment among the Mannish.”

“That has nothing to do with my consumption of food,” Bilbo said. 

“Let me finish.” Thorin reached out a hand, just slightly, and dropped it. “Much as you have little knowledge of Dwarves, I have nearly none of Hobbits. How was I meant to know how much your people eat?”

“You’ve had experience with the eating habits of Big People.”

“Men,” Thorin corrected. “Mannish communities. And I can tell you…from what I saw of Hobbits before I reached your home, the Shire is plentiful. Hobbits eat more than any other people I’ve ever met.” She ran one hand through her thick black hair. “With those habits about and well-known…other peoples who need so much more than we do – how could _we_ be considered the greedy ones?”

“I don’t understand,” Bilbo said. 

“Exactly.” This time, Thorin did take Bilbo’s hand. Hers was much larger than Bilbo’s, and so warm that Bilbo wished she could shrink enough to nestle inside the palm. “You don’t understand, because you’re not _one of us_. So if I…if I rush to defend myself…”

“It’s not because of anything that I would know in my life.” Bilbo looked down at the blankets over her legs, a sudden image of a much-younger Thorin being berated and shouted at by shadowed, featureless Men flashing through her mind. “Why would you kiss me, then?”

“You can’t understand,” Thorin repeated, “but that doesn’t mean you haven’t tried. You’ve been a true friend to us, Bilbo Baggins. And – you are…attractive.” She squeezed Bilbo’s hand. 

Bilbo squeezed back. “Bilberry,” she said. “If you’re going to make enormous pronouncements about my value as a tumbling-mate, Thorin Oakenshield, then you’d best use my full name.”

“A tumbling-mate?” Thorin asked. “Is that what you Hobbits call it?”

“Kiss me and find out,” Bilbo said, “and don’t stop. I’ve just survived trolls threatening my life. If you stop, I’ll rip you to pieces.”

Thorin blinked, her eyebrows going up. “Is that an invitation?”

“Yes.” Bilbo patted her thighs and pulled the blankets away from her body. “Please do come in.”

Thorin wasted no time in doing just that. She looked about for a moment, then turned back to Bilbo and slipped out of her clothing, barely standing there long enough for Bilbo to see what she looked like with nothing on before getting into the bedroll. “What shall I do to you, burglar?”

“Anything you want.” Wait. She didn’t know anything about what Dwarves did in bed. For all she knew, Thorin’s greatest desire could be to cut her breasts off and then bite her head off like a green-mantis did to her mate. “Well, first kiss me again. Then you can do as you like, but…please go slowly.”

“Very well,” Thorin said, and wrapped her arms around Bilbo. With their faces close, she rubbed her nose against Bilbo’s, then kissed her again. This time, Bilbo did not pull away. She closed her eyes instead and opened her mouth; shivers of pleasure and – she had to admit – some shock ran up the length of her back when Thorin began to use her tongue. 

With her eyes still closed, she ran her hands down Thorin’s sides and then cautiously ventured upwards to touch her breasts. Thorin gasped against her mouth. “Is this all right?” Bilbo asked, turning her head to the side for just a moment so that their lips separated. 

“ _Yes_. Do it again.”

Bilbo obliged, very slowly. It wouldn’t do to heat things up too quickly, after all, and she had to admit that she enjoyed the idea of making the King Under the (if all went well) Mountain squirm in anticipation. She spent some time using her hands to explore Thorin’s breasts, which were rounder and firmer than she would have thought, and sparsely covered in soft hair. 

Thorin shuddered so fiercely that it could have shaken the earth when Bilbo started to stroke her nipples. “ _Bilbo!_ ” She broke away from their kiss and bit Bilbo’s neck, burying her face against her shoulder. 

“Yes?” Bilbo rubbed Thorin’s nipples with the pads of her thumbs and lightly pinched each one, then kissed Thorin’s hair. It smelled of smoke and was long enough to cascade down Bilbo’s chest. The thought that she was wrapped in nothing but a few blankets and Thorin’s hair, naked under the covers, was making her embarrassingly wet. 

Thorin growled and covered Bilbo’s breasts with her own hands. Her touch was harder than Bilbo’s; she squeezed and rubbed her nipples with rough fingers, hard but not hard enough to hurt. On the contrary, it felt incredible. Bilbo moaned and thrust her hips up in an attempt to find something to grind down on – she hadn’t brought herself off since before they left, and she was feeling that now. 

“Bilbo.” Thorin’s voice dipped deep. “My hobbit.” One hand left Bilbo’s breast and went lower, rubbing over her belly and then covering the curls of her field. “Let me touch you.”

“Yes.” Bilbo grabbed Thorin’s wrist and pressed her hand hard against her. “Oh, yes!”

Bilbo found herself thoroughly kissed as soon as the words had left her lips, as one rough finger parted her outer lips and circled around her bean. At the sensation, she bit Thorin’s lip, which earned her two fingers just inside her furrow, gathering wetness and then rubbing her again. 

“Fuck!” Bilbo hissed. With her wetness making things smoother, the roughness of Thorin’s fingers only increased her excitement and made her grind down on the Dwarf’s hand. 

Thorin said something in the queer Dwarvish language, the one Bofur called the Old Tongue, and squeezed Bilbo’s bean between her fingers. Her other hand continued to squeeze and stroke and caress Bilbo’s breast and nipple, and her mouth and tongue were engaged with Bilbo’s. Unable to see what was going on between her legs, Bilbo could only rely on her sense of touch – and being touched – to know what Thorin was doing. 

“I’d see you peak,” Thorin panted into Bilbo’s mouth. “Into my hand, all over it – ah!”

Bilbo unsteadily touched Thorin’s breasts and belly in reciprocation, but her concentration was elsewhere. She could feel her legs beginning to shake, and felt drops of her own wetness dripping past Thorin’s fingers and onto the insides of her thighs. She was going to peak, and soon; Thorin would get her wish. 

The tip of Thorin’s forefinger settled on her bean and began rubbing hard and fast, no longer making circles but instead going back and forth on the slippery nub. “ _Do_ it,” Thorin said. Her lips pressed hard against Bilbo’s one more time, then moved to the tip of her ear. 

Bilbo couldn’t help screaming as she obeyed. Her hands fastened on Thorin’s wrist hard enough to hurt her fingers, holding Thorin’s hand down while she shook through a climax. Her vision momentarily squeezed into blackness with the pleasure and then returned to a wavery normal that bounced with her heartbeat. Her breath sounded wheezy to her ears, and was as loud as a winter wind. 

“Well done,” Thorin said. Had Bilbo been in possession of her senses, she would have said that Thorin sounded _impressed_ , but that couldn’t be the case. She wasn’t in full wits. “Have you any more in you?”

“Try,” Bilbo gulped out, then made another attempt at speaking. “Try again and find out.”

Thorin did. This time, she used the flats of two fingers to rub her, and Bilbo came even more quickly and powerfully than she had the first time. “ _Oh_ ,” she sighed as she came down from the pleasure. “Good gracious, Thorin. I would never have guessed.”

“Hm.” Thorin kissed her cheek and raised an eyebrow. “Guessed what? That I’m capable of making anyone else feel good? Have my nephews been spreading that one about again?”

“No. If they had, I’m sure you would have cut them limb from limb with your sword.”

“Certainly. They have no right to speak of me like that.” Thorin hugged her close. “Or of you, which is why I demanded that Óin not put you down in the middle of everyone. You can’t possibly imagine the jeers that would come of seeing you without clothing.”

Bilbo winced. “Then I’m grateful.” She rolled over onto her side and looked up into Thorin’s face. “You haven’t, er, peaked yet, have you?”

“No, no. I don’t need to.” Thorin pulled some of her long hair out of her own face, shaking her head. “I wanted to please you, not myself.”

“That’s nonsense,” Bilbo said. Honestly, she would _never_ figure out how Dwarves operated. “It’s perfectly all right to be greedy in bed, Thorin! It’s about _taking_ your pleasure as well as giving it.” She hoisted herself up on her elbows and wriggled back up, kissing Thorin thoroughly and deeply. She’d had her peaks, and now it was her turn to make Thorin cry out. 

It took some maneuvering, but she was able to lift the blankets and look down at Thorin’s belly. It was covered in the coarse hair that she’d felt under her hands earlier, hair that thickened to a dense mat of black curls between her legs. She’d certainly never seen a lass (or even a lad) so hairy, but on Thorin’s body, she quite liked it. “Shall I touch you like you did me?”

“No. I like that, but other things…those are better.” Thorin’s cheeks went pink when Bilbo looked back up into her face, and her pupils widened, darkening the blue of her eyes. “Pressure.”

“Oh. Like this?” Bilbo carefully pressed her knee against Thorin’s furrow. The outer lips opened as she applied more pressure. “Oh, goodness. You’re certainly wet.”

“Y- _yes_.” Thorin gulped and let out a hiss through her gritted teeth. “Like that.”

Bilbo kissed Thorin’s shoulder as she moved her thigh in a slow circle. She knew it was nonsense to think so, but she fancied she could feel Thorin’s bean growing harder with every pass of her knee. “You’re _lovely_ like this,” she said. “Has anyone ever told you so?”

“Aye. I like your compliments bes - _ah! There!_ ” Thorin gave a loud moan, and Bilbo began to press her knee forward harder and faster. “Yes, fuck…fuck me…”

 _I shall_ , Bilbo wanted to say, but the urgency of making Thorin come seemed to have stolen away all her words. In an effort to reach that end, she pinched Thorin’s nipples in time with the thrusts of her thigh, just as Thorin had done for her. 

Thorin whimpered softly and again, louder, when Bilbo pinched more quickly. “You like that,” Bilbo bit out. “Shall I – use my mouth?”

“ _Aye_!”

“Mmm.” Bilbo lowered her head – not an easy thing, with their differences in height, but she managed – and took one of Thorin’s nipples in her mouth. She sucked at it until it hardened and Thorin cried out, grabbing Bilbo’s hair in both fists. “Ow! Stop, Thorin.”

Thorin let go of her hair, only to clamp her hands down on both of Bilbo’s shoulders instead as she ground on her leg and whimpered. “ _Bilbo_ \- hold still, I…”

“You’re close,” Bilbo guessed. Thorin shook from head to toe and nodded, kissing Bilbo’s neck again. “Then do it.” Thorin wasn’t the only one who could give orders in the bedroll. If there was one thing a hobbit was good at, it was eating, but sex was a very close second. 

Thorin tightened all over, spasmed against Bilbo’s leg, and muffled a scream into her hair as she came harder than one of Gandalf’s fireworks booming off the ground. _Goodness_. Bilbo couldn’t help feeling _extremely_ impressed. She recalled screaming herself earlier, but certainly not that loudly. “Well done,” she said. 

“Don’t mock me,” Thorin replied, and Bilbo rolled her eyes. Even in the middle of a sweaty tumble, Thorin was somehow still able to give her that imperious look. “I suppose bringing you away from the others was a good idea.”

“Especially Óin,” Bilbo said, stroking Thorin’s breasts. “He’s already seen me in the altogether, from what you said. I don’t want to give him the privilege any longer than necessary.

“He’s an old pervert," Bilbo continued, on a bit of a roll now. "Didn’t you hear him the first night? He was offering to bleed us and purge us and…goodness knows what else, I didn’t stop to listen! Are all of your apothecaries so vulgar?” Bilbo gathered the blankets about her. The wind was growing colder, and she didn’t want to freeze to death before Thorin could find her some clothing. “And could I have my clothes back? I know they don’t fit terribly well anymore, but they’re all I have.”

“I sent my nephews to wash them. Mahal knows that’s all they’re good for,” Thorin said. She gave that smile, small yet as significant as the sun at the beginning of dawn, and kissed Bilbo’s forehead. 

Bilbo chortled at the very thought of Fíli and Kíli even trying to wash clothing neatly. The one time she’d watched them washing their spare cloaks, they’d gotten all their clothing wet and ended up having a splash fight. Thorin had been furious, but it had been nothing compared to the thrashing Dwalin had given them on the backs of their heads for ‘wastin’ everyone’s time, ye wee clots.’ 

“Stop laughing. They’re under strict orders not to harm your clothing, on pain of death. But for now…” Thorin picked up her fur cloak and held it out, as if inviting Bilbo to step in. “If you don’t wish for everyone to know, then I have others, but this will do if you’re not…shy.”

“I’ve never been,” Bilbo said, “and I don’t mind.” Whether invited or not, she stood and stepped into the warmth of Thorin’s embrace. It felt like more than fur: there was protection there, and the promise that Thorin had made of always making sure that she was well-fed from now on. 

The warmth in Thorin’s eyes when she looked up at her was almost as good as elevenses.


End file.
